He said the negativity which had arisen as a result of criticisms of the campaign would be hurting New Zealand's tourism industry because of the ease with which news travelled around the world.

"I think it's a storm in a teacup and it won't be doing our advertising overseas any good because we live in a global village and everyone picks up these debates online."

But the head of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, Professor Shaun Hendy, said that on a per-capita basis, New Zealand had one of the highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

The Victoria University physics professor said the association stood behind Dr Mike Joy's claims that it was wrong to call New Zealand "100 per cent Pure".

Dr Joy made headlines last month when the New York Times quoted his views on New Zealand's environment.

"There's two worlds," he told the newspaper. "There's the picture postcard, which is Queenstown and up in Mt Cook and all that kind of stuff which is perfect and where they make the Hobbit movies, and all that is amazing.

"But most of New Zealand, 70 per cent of it isn't like that. It's really badly polluted and we are just getting worse and we crucially need to have that clean green image to sell all of our products overseas."